Brief Report: Differential Persistence of Primary Reflexes for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Replication.

Primary reflexes are highly stereotypical, automatic movements comprising much of the motor repertoire of newborns. The current study examined rates of presence of five primary reflexes (snout, visual rooting, sucking, tactile rooting, and grasp) and variables predictive of their persistence for children with ASD (n = 35), developmental disability (n = 30), and typically developing children matched to participants with ASD on chronological age (n = 30). There was a higher prevalence of snout and visual rooting reflex among children with ASD. These data suggest that the persistence of primary reflexes holds promise as a biomarker for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The positive association between perceived parental responsiveness and self-esteem, anxiety, and thriving among youth rugby players: A multigroup analysis.

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between young players' perception of mother's and father's responsiveness with their self-esteem, anxiety (i.e., worry), and thriving (i.e., positive affect, vitality, and life satisfaction). In total, 314 male British rugby players with a mean age of 16.23 years (SD = 0.26) completed the study in two phases: n = 124 (first dataset), and n = 192 (second dataset). Participants trained on average 3.14 times/week (SD = 0.94) and had been involved in rugby for an average of 8.21 years (SD = 2.89). Participants completed questionnaires measuring perceived parental responsiveness (PPR) for their mother and father, self-esteem, worry about sport performance, and thriving indicators (i.e., positive affect, vitality, and life satisfaction). The results consistently indicated that participants' perceptions of their mother's and father's responsiveness positively related to thriving, and negatively related to their worry about sport performance, mediated by their self-esteem. Overall, the study highlights the need for parents to be provided with insights into the value of being responsive to their child and being encouraged to regularly talk with their child regarding their needs and desires, and seeking to understand how their child perceives the support they currently receive.

Language and culture modulate online semantic processing.

Language has been shown to influence non-linguistic cognitive operations such as colour perception, object categorization and motion event perception. Here, we show that language also modulates higher level processing, such as semantic knowledge. Using event-related brain potentials, we show that highly fluent Welsh-English bilinguals require significantly less processing effort when reading sentences in Welsh which contain factually correct information about Wales, than when reading sentences containing the same information presented in English. Crucially, culturally irrelevant information was processed similarly in both Welsh and English. Our findings show that even in highly proficient bilinguals, language interacts with factors associated with personal identity, such as culture, to modulate online semantic processing.

Reports of intimate touch: erogenous zones and somatosensory cortical organization.

INTRODUCTION: Erogenous zones have paradoxical response properties, producing erotic feelings from body surfaces distant from the genitalia. Ramachandran has suggested an intriguing neuroscientific explanation for the distribution of erogenous zones, based on the arrangement of body parts (such as the adjacent positioning of the genitals and the feet) in primary somatosensory cortex (S1). The present study represents the first systematic survey of the magnitude of erotic sensations from various body parts, as well as the first empirical investigation of the S1 theory of erogenous zones, by analysis of whether evaluations of erogenous magnitude from adjacent S1 sites tend to correlate. METHODS: A sample of some 800 participants, primarily from the British Isles and Sub-Saharan Africa, completed a survey of 41 body parts, each rated for erogenous intensity. RESULTS: Ratings for the feet were surprisingly low. However, there were remarkable levels of correlation between ratings of intensity, regardless of the age, sexual orientation, nationality, race and, more surprisingly, the sex of our participant sample (R(2) values ranging between .90 and .98). Multiple regression and factor analysis investigated whether body parts nearby in S1 were significantly correlated. CONCLUSION: The S1 hypothesis appears to lack support, because of the low level of foot ratings, the lack of inter-correlation between ratings for nearby S1 sites, and the previous literature suggesting that cortical stimulation of S1 does not appear to be erotogenic. The consistency across demographic variables is open to multiple interpretations. However, it may be that individual experience or cultural differences (a starting point for some accounts of erogenous zone distribution) are not substantial determining variables. Thus, while S1 does not appear to be the likely site that would support Ramachandran's neural body map proposal, we suggest that the origins of erogenous distribution may derive from a map located elsewhere in the brain.

Do infants show generalized imitation of gestures? II. The effects of skills training and multiple exemplar matching training.

The determinants of generalized imitation of manual gestures were investigated in 1- to 2-year-old infants. Eleven infants were first trained eight baseline matching relations; then, four novel gestures that the infants did not match in probe trials were selected as target behaviors. Next, in a generalized imitation test in which matching responses to baseline models were intermittently reinforced, but matching responses to target models were not eligible for reinforcement, the infants matched baseline models but not the majority of their target behaviors. To ensure their failure to match the target behaviors was not due to motor constraints, the infants were trained, in a multiple-baseline procedure, to produce the target responses under stimulus control that did not include an antecedent model of the target behavior. There was no evidence of generalized imitation in subsequent tests. When the infants were next trained to match each target behavior to criterion (tested in extinction) in a multiple-baseline-across-behaviors procedure, only 2 infants continued to match all their targets in subsequent tests; the remaining infants matched only some of them. Seven infants were next given mixed matching training with the target behaviors to criterion (tested in extinction); they subsequently matched these targets without reinforcement when interspersed with trials on which matching responses to baseline models were intermittently reinforced. In repeat tests, administered at 3-week intervals, these 7 children (and 2 that did not take part in mixed matching training) continued to match most of their target behaviors. The results support a trained matching account, but provide no evidence of generalized imitation, in 1- to 2-year-old infants.

The effects of modelling, local stimulus enhancement, and affordance demonstration on the production of object-directed actions in 6-month-old infants.

The present study investigated whether local stimulus enhancement and the demonstration of objects' affordances--both of which are inherent in modelling of object-directed target actions--are themselves sufficient to evoke the target behaviour on imitation test trials. Six-month-old infants were presented with a puppet wearing a removable mitten and observed either a demonstration of mitten removal (modelling group), the experimenter pointing at the mitten (stimulus enhancement group), the mitten falling off apparently by itself (affordance demonstration group), or no specific action directed at the mitten (control group). For all infants, the puppet was next presented without any accompanying demonstrations and infants' mitten removal behaviours in the response period were recorded. The results showed that local stimulus enhancement and affordance demonstration were as effective as full modelling in evoking the target action. This finding shows that the performances of 6-month-old infants on imitation tests can be multiply determined and evoked by variables other than modelling of target behaviour.